Sergeant_Tibbs Luis Buñuel is one of those directors I really want to love. Los Olvidados was a winner for me but Exterminating Angel, Discreet Charm, Belle de Jour and now Viridiana are films I consider good but not great. Perhaps their meanings just fly over my head. There's no doubt that Viridiana has Buñuel's finest cinematography. With its deep whites and blacks and brilliant framing, it's one of the finest shot films of the 60s at the very least. But there's something about the story that doesn't sit with me right. I just don't know what Buñuel is trying to say with his stories. The plot progresses and it's interesting watching this character be tested throughout these obstacles and it never feels like it's trying to say something that isn't cryptic. Is it about morality? Class comparison? Religion? I don't mind when films don't spell it out for me but when a film like Viridiana is so exquisitely shot and acted, it's quite unsatisfying and a little frustrating to not get anything out of it. Maybe it does touch those who love it in a way that I just don't relate to at all to even recognize. Still, very good on the surface.7/10

lreynaert While 'Viridiana' contains some well known aspects of L. Buñuel's movies, like fetishism or voyeurism, its main target is, like in 'L'Age D'Or', religion and more particularly Catholicism with its gospel of pity and altruism. This gospel is personified in an aspirant-nun, played sublimely by the Mexican actress Silvia Pinal. But, faced with utterly disgraceful behavior on the part of the poor people she wanted to help, she becomes on the tones of Haendel's music an anti-Messiah.For the Catholic Church this movie is fundamentally a blasphemy, symbolized by its hellish parody of the Last Supper (the picture by Leonardo Da Vinci) with the apostles painted as vile and vicious paupers and beggars. Another of L. Buñuel's more controversial viewpoints is his misogyny expressed by Don Jaime's illegitimate son, Jorge: 'all cats are grey at night'.With a formidable casting, Silvia Pinal being the jewel of the team, this movie didn't lose even a shadow of its subversive bite at Christian morality. A must see for all lovers of world cinema.

Armand cruel, profound, strange. Bunuel in pure form. picture of society transformation and drawing of its values fall. a masterpiece in each ingredient - music, image, acting. and, nothing new, a slice of blasphemy as part of demonstration about deep change of reality. a film about innocence and abyss of good intentions. about meetings and dark gestures. about surrounding of a young woman front with circle of reality. beautiful, impressive, its virtue is timeliness.and the bitter taste of ash front with a critic against patriarchal Spain. broken of illusions, definition of hypocrisy, lesson about cruelty, it is a masterpiece as mirror for a profound savage society.

morrison-dylan-fan With having earlier this year seen Luis Bunuel's interesting,surrealist first film (co-directed with Salvador Dali) L'Age D'or,I became very interested in taking a look at a second Bunuel film,when a I noticed a friend mention that they had been interested in seeing a Bunuel movie that involved the optimistic,helpful ideas of a nun being completely torn into shreds.The plot:Prepairing to at last take her vows to officially become a nun,Viridana receives an unexpected invitation from her uncle ( Don Jaime-who is also her only surviving relative) to go and pay a visit to him.Feeling uneasy about accepting her father's offer,Viridana is convinced by her mother superior that accepting Jaime's (who has also help with funding her training) offer would be a good deed.Arriving to Jaime's farm,Viridana discovers that Don lives a reclusive life in a run down farm with a few,worryingly loyal servants.Attempting to stay true to her values,Viridana begins to fear for her life,when Jaime tells her that she reminds him of his deceased wife,who died on their wedding night.Using a number of manipulative ways to increase her sympathies towards him,Don eventually gets Viridana to dress up in his wife's wedding gown.Astonashied by Viridana looking exactly like his wife on their wedding night,Jaime decides to ignore Viridana's angelic pleas,and begins to think about "reliving" the only night that he ever had with his wife,and also of permanently tainting Viridana's innocents.View on the film:Whilst co-writer/ (along with Julio Alejandro) director Luis Bunuel takes a surprisingly restrained approach to the surrealist moments in the film, (with a sharp reenactment of "The Last Supper" and the use of an unsettling song at the end being the two best,and most disturbing surreal moments in the movie) Bunuel display an impressive focus in fully showing the decayed world that Viridana (played by a very cute Silvia Pinal) finds herself enclosed by,with Bunuel using a number of well handled tracking shots to show the rusting world slowly taking the angelic shine off the innocent Viridana permanently.For their adaptation of Benito Perez Galdos's novel Halma,Bunuel and Alejandro show a brilliant take no prisoners approach to all of the character's featured in the film.Making Viridana be someone who sticks to their beliefs with all their might,Bunuel and Alejandro peel away all of Viridana's sheen with a fantastically harsh relish,that goes from her desperately trying to make her uncle happy,to a group of "poor,defenceless" beggars who she does everything to help,completely crushing her so that they can chew and spit out Viridana to the world,as a dead,empty shell.